"The Mystery of Love"

Saturday, March 15, 2014

Today's reflection is about the difficulty and the duty of loving others -- all others, not just those we naturally respect and like.

When I was young, I loved the works of an author I have since decidedly cooled on (his later works in particular got kinda nuts), but there is one truth he wrote that I still find profound: you can't really know someone, as they know themselves, and not love them as they love themselves.

To that end, God's omniscience is related to His ability to be All-Loving.  Of course, I think that might be putting things in reverse.  God is Love, and everything He knows about us doesn't stop that.  It is we humans who have to go in the opposite direction -- from knowing to loving.

It's easy to see how too much knowledge of a person could, in fact, make it harder to love them.  But then I think about the way my father taught me that a lawyer must approach the truth.  He said that the person who won the case, every time, was the person who knew the most about it -- because there were no true facts that could really hurt you.  You just had to find a way to turn them to your advantage.

Because there's always a truth under the most obvious one and even a truth under that.  Not an excuse -- not a reason we should discount harm done by someone -- simply a thing to know about them that would make them still worth loving.  Or would show us that we are not immune to their foibles.  To recognize, even in the worst crimes, the seed of its cause that we recognize in ourselves.

The more we know about a person, the more kinship we feel with them.  We love others the more we know them because we are imperfect ourselves, and we know their struggles and loves in that way.  God loves us despite what He knows of us -- and perhaps because He knows us so perfectly.

It is hard to see at times, but that is our duty as Christians.  That is why we have to do it.  If it were easy to love those who are broken and angry and snapping at the world in fear and pain, then we would not need strength and grace to do it.  And they would not need our love so very much.